


[Fandom stats] Kudos, comments, hits, bookmarks, and word count: what’s “average” on AO3?

by toastystats (destinationtoast)



Series: Fandom Stats [24]
Category: Fandom - Fandom
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Nonfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2019-09-07 01:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16844275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinationtoast/pseuds/toastystats
Summary: A look at the distribution of popularity metrics (as of Nov 2014).  At that time, over 40% of fanworks had no comments.





	[Fandom stats] Kudos, comments, hits, bookmarks, and word count: what’s “average” on AO3?

**Author's Note:**

> Originally [posted to Tumblr](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/post/102920936231/toastystats-ao3-word-counts-dates-and). Since posting, I've realized that popularity metrics vary a lot across different fandoms, tropes, etc.

  
* Note: public bookmarks only 

**[TOASTYSTATS](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/stats): AO3 WORD COUNTS, DATES, AND POPULARITY METRICS**

How many words do most fanworks have on AO3? How popular are most works? When were they posted?

I sorted all AO3 works by the following variables: Date Posted, Word Count, Hits, Kudos, Comments, and Bookmarks. For each of these, I then got the max and min values, and a number of percentiles in between.

I've labeled the values at the 10%, 50%, and 90% percentiles on each of the above graphs, as well as the most extreme points. Full [raw data](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1EpW15220isNc8-JzkXY_C19MGSwFoxk4kTKuFLgNkrw/edit?usp=sharing) is available.

Please note that "popularity" is a messy and often problematic concept which I've [written about](http://destinationtoast.tumblr.com/stats#pop) a bunch before.

**Methodology**

I did an [AO3 Works Search](http://archiveofourown.org/works/search) and chose "Sort by: word count" or whichever variable I was interested in (I left all other fields blank). To get the 10% percentile value, I looked at how many pages of search results were returned by AO3 (68417 pages, currently). I multiplied the number of pages by search results by 0.1 and went to page 6842, then looked at the word count of works on that page. Date Posted is slightly more tricky, because the date displayed on works is the date updated, and authors can also backdate their works. But by looking at the date that most of the one-chapter works have on a given page, you can figure out the date posted.


End file.
